Hand and shoe monitors for detecting alpha and beta radiation are an essential part of a radiation protection program in facilities where there is a high probability for radioactive contamination of personnel or laboratory property. Through the years hand and shoe monitors have progressed from Gm tubes and simple count rate indicators to more sophisticated scintillation or gas flow proportional probes with complex counting and background compensation circuitry. Ionization chambers have not seriously been considered for this application, probably, because of the slow input response time of low-level ionization chamber input circuitry and undesirable background electrical signals from window vibration due to user contact, especially when the user steps on the probe.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an improved hand and shoe radiation monitor.
Another object of this invention is to provide a hand and shoe radiation monitor which utilizes ionization probes.